I am, at the moment using GeoCities, which seemed the easiest and quickest method at the time of getting a web site up and running. Now though, with a little more experience under my belt i am seeing its limitations; lack of PHP and limited graphic file use in particular, as well as the fact that it seems to block my uploads for at least an hour (sometimes up to 3 hrs) a day.

But where to start?

I don't have a lot of money to spend on subs, (who does) but would appreciate something easy to set up and use that is fast and reliable. that might even give me a domain name that i can remember (without all that GeoCities stuff before it, that is).

I've searched on the web but that's just bewildering.

Any suggestions greatfully received...

: Re: Good web host required
: BudgieDecember 24, 2008, 12:36:57 PM

Well this site and my own two websites are run using Virtual Names (http://www.virtualnames.co.uk/) who can supply the URL of your choice with .co.uk names from £8.50 for 2 years and hosting from £20 a year with full PHP, MySQL & email servers. I've been with these since 2000 and have received a very good service, no noticable down time and all the services I need, plus they are UK based.

Another alternative that seems to work well for other weather websites is URL by GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com/) with domain names from £1.34 and hosting by E-Rice (http://www.e-rice.net/) for $10 per year.

That gives you a couple of choices. ;)Watch the pricing on some of the hosting sites as they sometimes quote the price per month, not per year!!

I know it's not the cheapest of hosts, but their support is brilliant, i could even get support tomorrow if anything went wrong in real time!ooops, nearly forgot to say, 34sp.com again based in the UK :D

The bit I am woried about WEB hosts lol I keep finking spiders sorry you have me lost already Complete Luddite here

: Re: Good web host required
: BudgieDecember 24, 2008, 04:53:24 PM

It's OK Jim. A Web Host is a company who you pay to provide space on their server to run your website from.You can run your own server but most people prefer to use an established server that has technical support, in case anything goes wrong. Basically it's as if you've sent your website to someone and they have placed it on the internet for you. You keep full control over what is on the website, they just make sure that it's always available for visitors to view when they type your web address into their browser. ;)

Martin has already mentioned the Go-Daddy/e-Rice combination (Registrar and Host)....I have been using such for my .net website for the last year as a real cheap alternative and as an experiment...It has proved to be a completely reliable way to get a website (in this case, php) up and running at comparitively very low cost...OK, the dollar exchange rate has changed somewhat now (I use the $20 per annum plan with e-rice), but I still consider it to be excellent value. There have been some excellent threads on the WD forum as to how to get it all set up with them...This thread here has links from some recent inputs etc. (http://www.weather-watch.com/smf/index.php/topic,36229.msg295979.html#msg295979)

Thanks to all who gave me ideas and suggestions for this one. It was really great to know I wasn't on my own.

I eventually moved Site and Uploads yesterday, with the help of some free FTP software all went amazingly well, much easier than I thought, and thanks to Martin I was hardly missing from the network either.

I did try to tidy up my files during the move so there are a couple of glitches to iron out!

Now hopfully, with a reliable and fast'ish service I will be able to get on and enhance the site, a Webcam would be nice.